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Monday 8 March 2010

I’ve done a Googly Boob!

youtube-logo(2) Last week I had one of those stupid senior moments. I use Windows Live Mail on my desktop to read all of my emails, and I kept getting a few ‘spam’ emails arriving from my Gmail account. Strangely when I investigated further by going online to try to find those same spam emails they weren’t there. I then did a foolish thing. I deleted my Gmail account. Knee jerk reaction I know caused by my brain not being in gear. BIG MISTAKE!

Picasa Why? Because  that account was associated with my Picasa account, my YouTube account, my Google reader, my Google Buzz and two blogs on Blogger!   I have lost them all and all the followers associated with those accounts. I tried to contact Google to ask them to reinstate my account. Sensibly they requested that I provide some proof to establish whether or not the account was actually mine.  So I listed all the sites that were associated with that email address. I supplied the account password as well. They replied stating that they required more details such as the dates when I actually joined each site.  Of course as someone who finds it hard to remember what day it is today, I couldn’t hope to provide this information  in a million years!

gmail_icon Could you remember the dates that you joined each site that you are subscribed to? Could you even get close to it? Since then, I have been desperately trying to log into my YouTube account to retrieve my videos that I have stored up there, but to no avail. You see each time that I try it asks me for the associated Gmail address for my YouTube account and of course that doesn’t work anymore as its no longer available.

Nor can I ‘restart’ it using the same details. Yes its true that before I deleted it  it did warn me and showed all of the sites that email address was linked to, but you know knee jerk reactions don’t you?  I saw the warning but it didn’t register at the time that I would be saying my last goodbyes  to all my content. My fault yes but Google, you ask the impossible of this scatter brained Granny in asking me to provide all those details and dates!

I am not the only one who considers that its a bad idea to have to need a Google email address associated with your YouTube account either. Take a look at these complaints HERE!

The answer of course is to open another Gmail  account and set everything up again.  Oh well, I suppose the moral of this story  is think carefully before you act, don’t have a knee jerk reaction and get your brain into gear!

TG  




9 comments:

  1. Actually, you don't need a Gmail account to access all of these Google services. Like Live ID, a Google account can be linked to third-party email address. Since you've got to set up a new Google account anyway, why not link it to your existing WL e-mail address? If you don't actively use Gmail anyway, it would greatly simplify things.

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  2. Greg, how do I do that? YouTube seems to DEMAND that you have a Google address which is why that hyperlink to the site shows so many disgrunted users complaining about it. Anyway,its too late now as this blog is now linked to another Gmail acount that I had to set up.
    Could you remember the dates of all the sites that you have joined? I know that they need proof of who you are before opening your account again but honestly!

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  3. I had the same issue with Windows Live once apon a time. A girlfriend new my password and hijacked me. It Took ages to get my online identity back not to mention having to do reformat my hijacked laptop. I lost everything! The lesson I learned was to make sure that you have a secondary/alternative email adress linked to your account. This makes things so much easier in the case of angry girlfriends or in your case TG, kneejerk reactions.

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  4. Now that you have a new account TG, link it to your WL email. I think it's in Email Options and then the setting associated with that account. You should be able to link it in there.

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  5. Do you mean link it as in link as a Live ID? They aren't really linked though are they? You know where you can use one instead of the other to access any of your sites or pages or blogs?

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  6. Not linked in the sense that it's aware of your other Google accounts, but linked as in tied to an e-mail address for communication purposes.

    It's rather like the discussion last week in LSB about switching the e-mail address behind your Live ID. Yes, a Google account is required to use most Google services, such as YouTube. But the e-mail address behind that account can be tied to a non-Gmail account, and you can switch to another e-mail service at will.

    For example, I have a Google account that is tied to my @Hotmail address, and I can use it access any Google service. To switch the Google account to use my @Yahoo address instead, I'd just go to Account (https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount) and click the link labeled Change E-mail.

    Like Live ID, this option seems to be available only if your Google account uses a non-Gmail address.

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  7. One worthwhile thing I did notice is that Google accounts allow you to associate multiple e-mail addresses and then to use any of those addresses to login.

    So if I associate my @Hotmail and @Yahoo addresses with my Google account, then I can login to Google services as greg...@hotmail.com and not have to maintain multiple Google accounts.

    That's very nice. Live ID has an alternate e-mail feature, which supports ONE other e-mail address. But it doesn't seem to support logging into WL services under that other address, unless you want to actually create another WL profile and then link them together (which creates a lot of confusion, IMO). I'd rather just have one account per service, so the Google solution seems like a win to me.

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  8. Hmm. I know what you mean (or I think I do!) you mean the alterate email addresses that you can set up in your Gmail account. I did set one up in the old account but (guess what!) I've forgotten which one of my others I used! LOL We oldies with the fried brains should really stick to one email address, one user name, one password etc etc!

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  9. I think there may be some confusion between the terms "Google account" and "Gmail account." A Google account is like a Live ID; it's just a key to use Google's online services. A "Gmail account" is Google's e-mail service. While they may be one in the same for most users, a non-Gmail user can still create a Google account that's tied to a third-party e-mail account and has nothing to do with Gmail.

    Even if you have a Gmail account tied to your Google account, you can still incorporate your other e-mail addresses as alternates and then use any of those addresses to sign into your Google account.

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